New School tattoos have gained great acceptance in recent years and have managed to establish themselves as one of the most popular styles among those who choose to get a tattoo.
New School tattoos are those in which they are prioritized bright and electric colors, with a wide variety of tones and a strong presence of gradients, adding the fundamental use of shading. It is extremely important to use several shades of each color, thus achieving the graphic effect that characterizes it so much and that marks it decisively. his influence coming from comics and graffiti.
Furthermore, in these tattoos, the black lines, well defined and delimited, take center stage. Something that does not happen with similar styles like the “full colour".
The growth of new school tattoos goes hand in hand with the development of the technological aspect. Yesand make the most of all the advances and new knowledge that have occurred in the field of tattooing. in recent years.
The improvements present in the new tattoo machines, and the pigments in the inks, which are much more durable and bright, have made it possible to create new and more convincing gradients, smaller details and colors that would have been unthinkable before to use in a tattoo.
It should be noted that perspectives are another characteristic point to take into account within new school style tattoos. Especially when multiple elements are used in a design, It is usually played with very risky perspectives. This results in an effect similar to three-dimensional tattoos, achieving a certain distortion in the shapes without losing the concept. Again, something very present and typical in urban graffiti.
Due to its characteristics, the New School, is able to adapt to any idea and offers us a large number of possibilities to have a great tattoo. The only restrictions you will have will be the skills of the tattoo artist and your ability to come up with an amazing design.
The successor line to the Old School
Both born in the United States, we could think of the New School style as a kind of wayward son of the Old School or traditional style.
To finish understanding the differences between one and the other, we are going to define some concepts that characterize both styles.
The Old School style, also called traditional, is characterized, like its successor, by the use of well-defined black lines. But When it comes to adding color, this is where the biggest differences begin to be seen..
The style Old School has a more than reduced color palette and an absolute absence of color mixtures. The colors used are green, red, blue and a few other options, but without any gradient. The idea of the Old School tattoo is to achieve a simple design, with few lines, full colors, without mixing and as we have said, without degradation.
The most used designs in Old School are anchors, seagulls, hearts, felines and here, in the designs, where paths cross again. The New School tattoo, although with a much broader limit, (since it includes cartoons, comics, graffiti, manga, etc) shares those designs, but unlike its parent, deepens gradients, shadows and color mixing to the maximum.
tattoos have lots of movement, a shiny and electric finish, with exaggerated dimensions, sometimes similar to 3D, sometimes closer to realism, with changes in tones, with passages from light to dark.
the missing link
We could not finish this article without talking about middle point between the New School and the traditional tattoo.
A little closer to the Old School style, it emerges as a revision of said style and achieves amazing designs. We talk about style Neo-Traditional.
As we have pointed out, neo-traditional tattoos are a modern version of Old School ones. Are quite faithful to its predecessor with respect to colors and thick lines, but adds greater depth through gradients and other colors, which include white.
Due to the fact that it is between two styles, it leads to confusion and is sometimes misclassified as New School. To understand it a little better, we could say that the traditional Neo style It uses fewer colors than the new school, but more than the Old School.
It does not have disproportionate proportions, and it moves away from the cartoonish or graffiti style that characterizes the New School. Although the gradients are very present as in the New School, The designs or motifs are a little more classic. Contrasts are more softened and colors are kept within a relatively limited palette.
To finish, then, we could establish the following list to correctly determine the essential features of each of these styles.
New School:
Lines: Abundant, varied in thickness, black and colored.
Designs: Complex, cartoonish and graffiti-influenced, distorted perspectives
Colors: Multiplicity of colors, electric, mix and gradient
oldschool:
Lines: Black, thick and well defined
Designs: Simple, classic.
Colors: Few, without mixing or gradation
Neo-Traditional:
Lines: Black
Designs: Detailed and multidimensional, revised classics.
Colors: Classic palette, with shading and gradient
I liked the article, I would like more to be written on the subject. I live in Cuba where there are many prejudices about tattoos. I have a lot of limps all over my body and people look at me as if I were an Alien????